Friday, 13 December 2013

Old ghosts

I once spent twelve months looking at a Neem tree, or Neem gaach, as we call it in Bengali. I was six then, and Ma and I were spending a year in my grandparent's house in Assam. They lived in a city called Tezpur, which to me felt like a sleepy little village after the fullness of Calcutta. There, looking at a Neem tree for hours on end seemed as good a thing to do as any. The Neem tree lived in my grandparents' house, just outside my bedroom window, and in that year which passed slowly like years do in small towns, the Neem tree became my friend. I'd been told by wise books of Bengali lore that Neem trees were home to ghosts, but even as a six-year-old, I knew there were no dead souls sitting in my tree swinging their cold, rubbery legs; though sometimes I wished there were.

The house started where the roots of the Neem tree ended, and then spilled and scattered, like rain on a tin roof, in all directions. The main house had the drawing room, the bedrooms and a puja room filled with a gaggle of Gods. From here, an open corridor led to the dining house, which had the dining room with its long wooden table, a large pantry with jars of pickles and another open corridor that took you into the kitchen and vegetable patch. These separate buildings didn't feel separate at all; they were connected by gardens and tiled courtyards that stitched them up like a patterned, patchwork quilt.

On the left of the main house was our cook Ramlal's cottage, and behind the cottage was the mango tree. In the summer, the tree filled with sweet mangoes and wily monkeys. The monkeys fought and ate and threw mangoes at each other, but even after they were done, there were more mangoes than we could eat. Ramlal and his cronies would climb the tree, and in a few hours a mountain of mangoes would collect in the corner of the dining room. For months, the house would smell sweet and sticky, and the monkeys would come and go as if they were house guests instead of petty thieves.

Apart from the Neem tree, and various snails and butterflies, my main companion in the house was Dadua, my grandfather. He was a very quiet man, but even through his silence, I heard his love louder that any other sound in the
house. My day always started with him holding my hand and taking me for a walk through mist and fog, before Ma woke up. We would
walk in comfortable silence - he tall and straight, with his high
forehead and shot of hair as white as his dhoti, and me
ending at his knees with a head full of curly, wild hair and curly, wild
thoughts. We stopped now and then to pick yellow funnel-shaped flowers
called Allamandas for me to wear on my fingers like little yellow hats.

Didun,
my grandmother, on the other hand, did not bother with such silences.
She was a woman with a strong personality, and stronger opinions. All
morning, she would bustle around the house, from kitchen to garden to
pantry, sending the servants scampering in all directions. By midday, she would settle in the Puja room where her Gods
demanded uninterrupted attention. There, she would spend many hours,
bathing the Gods, changing their embroidered dresses, giving them food
and flowers. Her practical nature and political views stayed parked
while she prayed. The only time I managed to break up her Puja was when I borrowed a garland of flowers from her Puja room and put it around a
framed photograph of my mother smiling in her graduation cap and lit an incense in front of it.

My memories of that year in Tezpur are intrinsically attached to smells. The smell of flowers and insence from the Puja room, the smell of Joha rice from the dining table, the smell of mist and Allamanda flowers, of over-sweet mangoes, of bitter Neem leaves, of the Bihari food that Ramlal cooked for himself in his cottage every evening. When I think of Ma in the house in Tezpur, I can smell books; her bedroom was a library, unchanged from her college days, with shelves of books from floor to ceiling, and in one corner, a gramophone and a stack of vinyls. When I think of Dadua, I smell soap and coconut oil and patience. When I think of Didun, I smell starched sarees, her Yardley talcum powder, and the blood-red Hibicus she would pluck, for her Puja, from a caterpillar-ridden tree. If your hands ever brushed against a caterpillar, its prickles made your skin puff up in raw, red welts, which burned and itched all day long.

I can also smell Didun's pickles. For when Didun wasn't praying, she was pickling. There were jars and jars of pickles in the pantry - mango and lime and tamarind and koromcha - huge ceramic jars, or boyom, which would be sunned in the morning, and brought back to the cool darkness of the pantry when the sun set. I would steal bits of mango and koromcha out of their jars when they stood in the sun; the shelves in the pantry were too high for me to reach.

With age though, I lost my taste for pickles. Pickles are meant to be stolen from jars; by little fingers, by conspiracy, on sneaky feet. They're never as good when you can reach the shelves and need no permission. But yesterday, for the first time, I put lemons into a jar like Didun used to. No, they weren't for a pickle; I was making preserved lemons. But the smell of the lemon and salt and juice made my jaw cramp and brought back memories of Didun and her pickle-pantry.

And strangely enough, it comes at a time when the house is about to become a ghost, a dead old soul. After Didun and Dadua passed away, the house was home to my Chotomama, my mother's younger brother, and his family. But with them moving to Calcutta, the house is being sold off. By next year, it'll have been razed to the ground along with all its stories. But its echoes will stay. I like to think old sounds never die - a laugh, a conversation, a glass breaking - they just keep bouncing off walls, their echoes growing dimmer till our ears can hear them no longer.

What will happen to my Neem tree? I hope they keep him, so old ghosts can sit and swing their legs.

Preserved lemons

There are a few things you can still preserve, and one such wonderful thing to keep in your pantry is preserved lemons. Though they're most popular in Moroccan cooking, they can be used in anything - salads, dips, an Indian dal. Once my jar is ready, there will be recipes to share.

Wash and scrub lemons. Take each and cut lengthwise in an X shape stopping about an inch from the bottom so they remain attached. Pack salt into the cuts; be generous - a tbs of salt for each lemon.
Take a clean jar with a tight lid and cover its base with salt. Put salt-packed lemons in the jar, and squish them in so their juices start to flow. Add the rest of the ingredients.
Press lemons firmly once more; they should now be covered with juice. Top up with more salt, cover jar with cloth, keep overnight. Next day, push the lemons down some more, put the lid on and keep.
After a month, the lemons should be soft and ready to throw into tagines, salads, dips and anything else you fancy. Keep the lemons in the fridge for up to 6 months once you've open the jar.

you have to write short stories Pia.. This is a fantastic short story. only that it is not fiction.I had a similar childhood as yours. having spent it in rural Kerala at my grandmother's. You remind me all that and I know exactly what you are talking about when you say the whole day is about different smells. Yet again, a beautiful post.

Oh, rural Kerala must've been lovely - and it has so much in common with Bengal. I can also imagine some of your smells, Anita. Thank goodness for memories like that, because life now is so very different.

What a haunting portrait you draw. I'm sure you did'nt quite mean it that way, but making the lemon achaar seems the most fitting tribute to times that have passed. The 'didan' and 'bibi' who grandmothered/curated my childhood also had their favorites preserves but I'd all but forgotten the eye-shutting tang of those huge lemon balls until now. Thank you! For reasons unknown, I'm now recalling the earthen smell of cool water from the 'kolshi' to wash down the taste. Like the brohmodoito and pethni that undoubtedly populated that Neem gacch (i hope it's still around too), I'll be back to haunt this blog. You write beautifully but feel and think even beauitiful-er! I don't have a lovely home in the country to look back on but also had a grandfather (also 'dadua') who populated my imagination in the siesta-less afternoons of heat-filled bedrooms in our Kolkata home. He devised his OWN cast of bhooths and pethnis, Urban Kolkata ones, to enact adventures that I even got to partially direct. I think it might be time for me to recall those too, honorthose tremendous nurturers of my mind. Thanks for writing and I look forward to many more lunchtimes whiled away on this blog. :-)

Chandreyee, my post would've been a little bit incomplete without your words. Thank you. For leaving a bit of your life here - you tied my story to yours, and made me feel like we waved at each other across thousands of internet miles. And thank you for reminding me of the earthen smell of the kolshi, and telling me about your didan and your bibi, and bringing back your dadua and your adventures with him. Who knows, maybe the bhooths and petnis of our childhood know each other.I certainly feel like I know you. Much love. And, come back; your haunting is very welcome.

Took me back to Dehradun, to my morning walks with my dadu...me in a bright red coat and hat, all of 4 years old, and my six footer dadu a big booming-voiced man, my hand all but lost in his big warm paw. Love your blog Pia!